ST. ANTHONY'S LIGHTHOUSE.
The district on this, the eastern, side of Falmouth Harbour, is Roseland, not by any means so named from roses, but rather from "rhos," meaning "moorland." It does not nowadays seem a good description. You figure a moor as a ghastly inhospitable upland, where it always rains or snows, and where the bleak winds beat upon the traveller on its unsheltered wilds. Now the Cornish "Roseland" is, in fact, a good deal nearer a land of roses than a terrible district of savage moors; and although part of it is undoubtedly high and exposed, it is not by any means an unfertile spot, and it abounds in the most delightful valleys, deep down, where the last salt ripples of the creeks lap lazily to the roots of oak-woods, and where the airs are warm and steamy; where not merely roses will grow, but sub-tropical plants flourish, and the fuchsia and the geranium come to amazingly vigorous developments. Such is Roseland.
St. Mawes, and Falmouth too, and indeed most of the places beside these waters, wear a very foreign look. The warm, languorous climate, inducing luxuriant and exotic growths and unusual ways of building, is largely responsible for this. St. Mawes, too, is built up-along from the waterside, on the face of a hill almost cliff-like. It owes its name to an Irish saint, who is variously styled St. Machutus, or Mauduit. He is the St. Malo after whom the well-known port in Brittany is christened. It is an ill-sounding name for a saint, whether we call him "Mauduit" or "Malo," reminding one of the rhyme in Valpy's "Latin Delectus":
"'Malo,' I would rather be,
'Malo,' up an apple-tree,
'Malo quam,' rather than
'Malo,' with a wicked man."
